Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes

by Mary E. Lambert

  “I’ve made a decision,” I tell the mostly abandoned house. “I’m moving out.”

  The only reply I get is the faint chirping of a lonely cricket. “No, don’t try to stop me. It’ll only be for a day or two. Or until Grandma Nora leaves.”

  The cricket chirps again.

  “Shut up, Jiminy,” I say, and stalk outside.

  I find a nice flat space behind the garage, surrounded by a little grove of young aspen trees. After clearing the space of any big rocks, I set up my tent. It’s a one-man and surprisingly easy to put up. It smells stale and a little cigarette-y. I suspect this was one of Mom’s yard sale spectaculars, but other than a hole or two, the tent is in pretty good shape. I fetch my things from the foot of the tree on the other side of the house, and by the time the sun starts going down, I’m ending the day the same way I started it: eating Pop-Tarts alone in bed. Only this time, bed is a sleeping bag and blanket in the backyard.

  For protection, I also have a flashlight and my phone. The phone is off. I’m too much of a coward to see if anyone has called or texted me since the Stair Incident. But if that freaky woman from Rae’s horror movie finds my campsite, at least I’ll be able to call the police before Mrs. Voorhees hacks me to pieces.

  As it gets dark, I click on the flashlight for comfort and so I can keep reading. Amanda’s book is just as good as it was this morning, but tonight I’m having a harder time losing myself in the story. I hear sounds that I might not normally notice: more crickets chirping, a car, a bird in one of the aspens, airplanes overhead. But it’s the other echoes that hold me hostage to reality: I keep hearing the words I yelled at Mom and seeing the stricken look on Leslie’s face and watching Drew’s back as he racewalks off our porch.

  Then I hear footsteps.

  Startled, I drop the flashlight and the book I was reading. I scramble for my phone. But with the blanket, sleeping bag, pillow, and Pop-Tart wrappers littering my tent, I can’t find it anywhere. How can I even lose something in a space this small?

  The footsteps come closer. It’s probably not an ax murderer, I tell myself. Then again, isn’t that what everyone thinks right before they’re chopped to bits? My hand collides with hard plastic. I snatch up my phone and jab down on the power button.

  “Who’s there?” I call.

  No answer. And let’s face it: No answer is just about the worst answer. It leaves room for all sorts of imagination. Then there’s scratching on the tent.

  That’s when I panic and, in my deepest voice (which actually isn’t very deep at all), I shout: “I’m calling the police.”

  “No! Don’t do that.” The front flap is pulled partially open, and Leslie’s face appears in the gap. “Are you okay?” she asks. “Is something wrong with your voice?”

  “No,” I say in my normal tone, “I’m just glad it’s you.”

  I didn’t think someone from the house would actually check on me, but I should have known Leslie would. And that bothers me, because if she was the one pouting in the backyard, I don’t know if it would occur to me to check on her. At least not right away.

  “Really?” Leslie perks up. She climbs the rest of the way into the tent, saying, “I thought you were mad at me.”

  “I am still mad at you,” I say. “I meant I’m glad in an I’m-glad-you’re-not-an-ax-murderer kind of way.”

  “Oh.” She turns to pull something into the tent after her and to zip the flap, but not before I see her expression fall. “I brought you my leftovers.” She holds up a Styrofoam container.

  “What?”

  “Grandma Nora took me to Marcini’s for dinner.”

  As if I didn’t already know how the universe feels about me. I was going to ask Grandma Nora to take me out, and instead Leslie got to go while I was sitting in the bathroom, trying not to cry. When I don’t reach out for the container, Leslie says, “It’s your favorite.”

  I take it from her and pop it open. “You don’t even like mushrooms,” I say.

  “But you do.”

  “Sometimes I hate you so much.” And we both know what I really mean is “Sometimes I hate that I can’t hate you.”

  “I hate you, too,” she says.

  I use my fingers to start shoveling whole ravioli into my mouth.

  Leslie takes a deep breath. “I tried to warn you we were coming. I really did.” She looks down where her index finger is tracing little patterns on my sleeping bag. Her fingernail makes a soft scratching sound on the nylon.

  I have to finish chewing before I can reply. “It doesn’t matter. You should have listened when I told you why I didn’t want to be friends with people who live so close. And no matter what, you shouldn’t have let Drew come anywhere near the house.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Really? ’Cause it kinda seems like you did.”

  “Really.” She stops scratching on the bag and leans forward, looking directly at me. “As soon as he figured out that I’m your sister, Drew was super excited. He kept asking if you wanted to come over and what you were doing. And then when it was time to go, he told Dylan’s mom that he would walk me home. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. He really wanted to see you—”

  I doubt he’ll ever want to see me again after today.

  I drop a mushroom back in the box. “Leslie, this isn’t making me feel better.”

  “But,” she says, “I texted you like a hundred times that we were coming. I thought you could meet us on the driveway or something, and when you didn’t text back, I told Drew he would have to wait on the porch. I knew you wouldn’t really want him to see the porch ’cause of all the stuff out there, but it was the best I could do. Except when we got to the house, the front door was open.”

  “I know,” I snap, angry because I’m the one who left the door open.

  “Anyway,” Leslie says in a littler voice this time, “I am sorry.”

  I don’t want her innocent explanations or her sympathy ravioli or her guilt trips and big eyes.

  “Oh, go away,” I say.

  “Can’t I stay out here with you? Mom brought all the odd-numbered egg cartons back inside while we were at Marcini’s, and now Grandma’s so mad that she’s throwing out all the egg cartons while Mom’s asleep.”

  “No,” I say.

  “But I don’t want to be in there when Mom wakes up.”

  “Leslie. Please just leave me alone.”

  And she does.

  I’m not really sure why I can’t let her stay. I’m as mad at myself as I am at her. I finish the ravioli, which doesn’t make me feel a whole lot better about the person I’m shaping into. While I was setting up a tent in the backyard so I wouldn’t have to share a room with her, Leslie was ordering my favorite dinner—a meal she doesn’t even like—so she could bring me the leftovers. I wish that she was more of a jerk. Or that I was less of one.

  Between bites of mushroom and noodle, I start to think about what Leslie said. As much as I don’t want to, I can’t help it. I check my phone. I have thirty-three missed texts. I am never silencing or ignoring my phone again. Ever, ever again.

  Five texts are from Melanie. (She and her mom won a karaoke competition—I can tell she’s excited but trying not to sound excited about it.) One is from Amanda. (Have I started her book yet?) Two are from Jenny. (She made a pot at her rec-center art class, a very lopsided pot if the picture is anything to go by.) So far so good. None of them mention the Stair Incident.

  Fifteen of the texts are from Leslie. Twelve are warnings that Drew is on his way.

  Seven are from Drew. I have to force myself to look at them:

  Visiting my cuz on Rainbow Rd. Can you come?

  Hey, your sister is here. You should come, too.

  ARE YOU THERE?

  Bringing your sis home. See you soon.

  At your driveway.

  Sorry we came at a bad time.

  ARE YOU OK?

  The remaining texts are from Rae. Unlike the others, she has heard a
bout the Stair Incident. I scroll through her messages. I feel like I’ve been swallowing rocks instead of mushroom ravioli. I don’t think Rae ever means to be mean, but Rae and her family are the definition of normal, and she expects other people—especially her friends—to be normal, too. But outside of school or when I hang out at Rae’s house, there’s not a lot that’s “normal” about my life.

  The gist of Rae’s texts is that Drew told her what happened and he’s really worried about me and call her, call her, call her. Why haven’t I called her yet?

  It’s probably good that I turned on my phone. If I take too much longer to call Rae, she might contact the National Guard. Or, more likely, she’ll start calling all our other friends. If she hasn’t already, that is. No, they would all be texting me about it if she’d told them what happened this afternoon.

  I wonder exactly what Drew told her, and I wonder how much of the house he could see. The furniture on the patio. The Beanie Babies on the stairs. Probably a little of the linens room. Definitely the sheets in the front window. Could he smell the spoiled milk?

  Time for damage control.

  Rae answers on the second ring: “Annabelle, is that you? What’s going on?”

  “Not much.”

  “That’s not what Drew said.”

  I know it’s silly, but I feel a little betrayed that they were talking, even if they were talking about me. I didn’t even know he had her number. Rae is really pretty. And good at flirting. Most guys like her better than me.

  “What did he tell you?” I try to sound casual, but I need to know what she knows before I can decide how to handle this.

  “He said that your house is weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “Weird messy. How come you never told me?”

  There are just some things you don’t tell other people. Rae only moved to Chatham when we were in fifth grade, so she doesn’t remember my family before things fell apart. If they ever thought about it, some of my other classmates might be able to guess that something bad happened to my family. Or the people we used to go to church with might be able to guess. Or the friends who used to come over before I turned ten. Like Amanda.

  But the thing is, when people start asking questions you don’t want to answer, it’s really easy to distract them. Just play it cool—if you let them know that what they’re asking about is a big deal, they might not let it go. But if you act like what they’re asking about isn’t life-shattering, you can change the subject. It’s super easy. People spend way more time obsessing over themselves than they spend thinking about anyone else, so you just ask them something about their lives and they’ll forget about yours fast enough.

  “Are you still there?” Rae’s voice comes across the line, sounding uncertain.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “I thought we were best friends,” she says.

  “We are.” And I find myself wanting to say all the things I’ve never said before. To unburden myself before it comes out in another angry fit. I thought I was keeping friends by keeping my secrets, but now I wonder if I’ve only kept my friends away.

  “Then dish,” she says.

  “First tell me what else Drew told you.”

  “Just that your house was messy and that you were fighting with your mom.”

  “I can’t believe he saw that.”

  “Why?”

  “I wasn’t just fighting with my mom. I was screaming at her.”

  “Annabelle, everyone loses it with their mom sometimes. I fight with my mom all the time. It sucks that he heard you, but it’s not that big of a deal. You’re not a terrible person. It just makes you normal.”

  And that’s enough. It all comes out. Right now, I need someone I’m not related to. She wants to listen, and I need to talk. At the moment, I can’t think of a better definition of a friend than that. I tell Rae everything. I mean everything. I tell her the things my family doesn’t even talk about with each other. All my untold truths gush out, like the filter between my mouth and my brain is MIA: the Death Files and Dad leaving and Grandma Nora coming and all the fighting and Drew showing up and me moving into a tent. I even tell her about the Five-Mile Radius.

  “Wow,” she says as I’m wrapping it up. By now it’s so late that even the crickets are quiet. “I had no idea. So what are you gonna do? Sleep outside the rest of the summer?”

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe. Do you have a better idea?”

  “I’ll talk to my mom.”

  “No!”

  “What? Why not?”

  “I don’t want her to know. I don’t want anyone to look at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  I pause, searching for the word.

  “Like I’m broken,” I say.

  “All right. What if I just tell my mom that things are bad for you at home right now?”

  “Why do you need to tell her anything?”

  “Because she’s my mom,” Rae says, and I wonder what it would be like to have a mom like that, the kind you tell things to.

  “If Drew calls you again, will you tell him that I don’t want people to know?”

  “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

  “I can’t. I don’t know if I can ever face him again.”

  “Chicken.”

  A few minutes later, I’m saying goodbye and about to hang up when Rae stops me. “Hey, Annabelle?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You really never told anyone else?”

  I shake my head, then remember that she can’t see me. “No,” I say. “I haven’t ever told anyone else. Just you.”

  “Cool.”

  We hang up after that. I’m feeling better than I have since the Stair Incident. I yelled at my mom and was mean to my sister. Drew saw me having an epic temper tantrum and Grandma Nora thinks I’m a spoiled brat. But there’s at least one person in the universe who knows everything and still likes me. “You’re not a terrible person,” Rae said. And even if she’s the only one who thinks so, at least there’s one. I can live with that.

  Here’s what I can’t live with: sleeping in a tent in the backyard. It’s freezing even in the middle of summer. My sleeping bag is warm enough, but my face and nose grow cold as the night wears on. It’s also super creepy.

  All night long, I hear strange sounds, and every time I hear something, I’m convinced it’s a psycho killer from one of Rae’s movies. And then there are all the rocks. I thought I got them out of the way when I was setting up, but the ground is lumpy and hard. I spend the whole night waking up every ten minutes with a new pebble or tree root digging into a different part of my body.

  So much for sleep. So much for moving out. Not that anyone but Leslie even noticed my dramatic gesture. I’ve got to move back inside. When the sun rises only hours after Rae and I hung up, I stuff a pillow over my face, trying to block out the sun and some stupid bird that sounds like it smokes a pack a day. There’s no way I’ll be able to survive another night out here.

  I just don’t know if I can survive another day in the house.

  I stay stubbornly in my tent, feeling sorry for myself. I could creep back up to Leslie’s room anytime, but it seems really far away, and after yesterday and the Stair Incident, I don’t want things to just go back to the way they were. I don’t know how long I lie there, drifting in and out of sleep, until my phone starts ringing. It’s Rae.

  I wake up with a vengeance, worried about why she’s calling so early in the morning.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Annabelle.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Good morning to you, too.” She laughs.

  “There’s not much good about it,” I groan.

  “I talked to my mom—”

  “You promised you wouldn’t,” I say.

  She laughs again. I hate morning people.

  “Relax,” Rae says. “I didn’t tell her anything specific, just that things are bad for you at home right now and I thought it would be good
for you to get away.”

  “Oh, okay … ”

  “And guess what.”

  I chew my lip, almost afraid to ask. But Rae sounds happy. Normal. Not disgusted. Not judgmental. “What?”

  “It’s a good thing I talked to my mom—because she said if you need a break from your family, you can come to the lake house with us!”

  I have to have heard her wrong. With all the catastrophes life has thrown at me lately, it seems too good to be true that Rae and her family would swoop in and save me like this.

  “Say that again,” I order her.

  “Mom said you can come to the lake house with us.”

  “For real?”

  “For real.”

  We talk it over. They’re leaving tomorrow at, like, 3:30 a.m. Rae says it’ll be easiest if I can come over today, and spend the night. That way her family won’t have to stop and pick me up on their way out of town. I just need to pack and get permission from my mom. The lake house! Three weeks in a beautiful, clean home with my best friend and swimming and water-skiing and boating.

  “That sounds perfect,” I say.

  “This is gonna be awesome! Mom says we can come get you after she goes to the dry cleaner’s and stuff. It’ll probably be a couple of hours.”

  “Okay, but you can’t bring anyone else to the house. Just you and your mom.”

  “Deal,” she says.

  “And you can’t come inside.”

  “Fine.”

  “Promise me you won’t even get out of your car.”

  “Annabelle, I promise!”

  Silence.

  “So … where do you live?”

  For the first time since my tenth birthday, I find myself giving a friend directions to my house.

  After Rae gets off the phone, I snap into business mode. I have tons to do. I start by taking down my camp. Then I go in search of Mom. She’s in the kitchen sifting through empty milk gallons. I barely finishing asking before she tells me I can go with the McKinleys. It’s almost insulting how happy Mom is to get rid of me—one less person to move around her stuff.

  Next I go up to Leslie’s room, dreading what I have to tell her. This is the one downside to Rae’s invitation. Leslie’s not going to be happy, but I have to go. I know it when I see her room. “What happened?!” I ask. If I was a cartoon character from some old Disney movie, my feet would be about a mile off the ground and my eyeballs would be completely out of their sockets.